Beijing: China’s rise as a major military force in the world and the country’s focus on modernising its hardware has been widely seen with caution by other countries. Beijing’s rapid militarisation though should also alarm a highly unlikely foe – mosquitoes!
The country has declared war on swarms of mosquitoes with South China Morning Post reporting that a cutting-edge military grade radar is being developed to combat the menace. A defence laboratory in Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) is working on a prototype that promises to detect the flapping of a single mosquitoe in a radius of 2 kilometres. It sends out rapid pulses of electro-magnetic waves and when they ‘hit’ even a single mosquitoe, they bounce back with all the information about its target – species, gender, flying speed and direction.
Science fiction? Not quite.
The technology being used is similar to one used in missile detection system. For mosquitoes though, it is being magnified exponentially. Health experts say that the technology could be a game changer in the war against mosquitoes – carriers of several deadly viruses around the world. Detection, control and prevention of mosquitoe outbreak are the prime focus areas of the radar-in-development.
In a world where mosquitoes have killed more humans than all wars combined, China’s latest experiment has already received close to US$12.9 million.
Bureau Report
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